Rio Yañez

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Rio Yañez (born 1980) is an American curator and artist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He was born at San Francisco General Hospital in San Francisco, California, to artists Yolanda Lopez and René Yañez. His parents separated after a few years but remained neighbors in the Mission District. Yañez earned a BFA from the California Institute of the Arts in 2005. He began collaborating with his father René on art projects around 2005. He has actively shown work with Galería de la Raza, SOMArts, and the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, among others. He was a member of The Great Tortilla Conspiracy, a tortilla art group that included Joseph “Jos” Sances, René Yañez, and Art Hazelwood. In 2014 he moved to the Fruitvale neighborhood of Oakland. After his father’s death in 2018, Rio became co-curator of the annual Día de los Muertos celebration in the Mission District.